As you're pretty, so be wise
by SarahBelle
Summary: ...wolves may lurk in every guise. She wasn't wearing a red hood when they first met and never wore one ever after, but he still always wanted to gobble her up. The life  and cloaks  of Granny, the Widow Lucas. Spoilers for 1x15
1. Chapter 1

She was twelve and her cloak was brown, not red, because who had coin enough for red cloth these days, and who'd waste it on a daughter? But her father and brothers did love her, they'd gone to fight the ogres so as she could sleep safe in her bed and come back victorious and mostly with all the body parts they'd left with. And now they went to hunt the wolf so everyone's sheep would be safe, and also so they could bring her back the pelt to make a better cloak. Gareth said the bugger was so big and she was so little, there'd be enough for a cloak for her and hoods and gloves for all the family as well, for the winter yet to come.

She bit down hard on her knuckles as the beast filled its mouth with Gareth's throat, worried it a little, tore the flesh and bone away from the rest of him. Blood sprayed up and she was sure a few drops splashed her hand and Gareth gurgled as he died, staring up at her and seeing nothing. The monster dropped its mouthful, stepped over the gushing twitching thing that had been her eldest brother but one. Went over to where Pa laid on his side, bleeding out and still cursing in a voice half dead, stared at him for a moment. Bit down, and the cursing stopped.

She bit down as well and more to keep the dark at the corners of her eyes away and the whimpers trapped in her throat, where they belonged. When the night was gone and the monster with it, that was the time to cry. Not now as Gareth stared up with empty eyes and the beast started to pull out Father's insides and tear at them.

_(She'll wonder afterwards if it was really an accident, if she simply slipped and fell or if she fainted for a moment or if – she hates to think this, but still - she jumped on purpose. She'd seen her life ripped apart seven times over and the pieces oozing black in the moonlight, her father's guts glistening by the lone torch glow. She could feel Gareth's blood cooling on her hand and smell it too, smell all of it. Perhaps she just couldn't take anymore. She scorns to think it now she's older, she's seen and smelled and done worse, but one moment she was on the roof and the next she was rolling across the bloody snow, and she'll never remember what happened in between.)_

All she could think, she remembers, as the monster turned to look at her is _What big eyes you have, what big ears, what big teeth._ Which was understandable, they were practically nose to nose as she struggled to sit up and the beast bent over her. _What big everything_, she thought_, all the cloaks and mittens we might have had from you_. The smell was so much worse down here on the ground, a reek of blood in general and shit coming from Pa and she couldn't help it. She was sick, just a little, and spat it out at the big bugger; absurdly pleased when it drew back, just a little.

But it came forward right away and almost nose to nose again, breath stinking on her face and Pa's blood and bile dripping onto her frock and hands. The drops seemed to sizzle on the backs of them, and her palms burned at she dug them into snow that was still white and a little crisp. _What big teeth_ she thought again, but she was beyond throwing up or pissing herself by now.

_I'm going to die too, _she realised at last, _I'm twelve and no one's going to come outside to save me, and I'm going to die,_ and was surprised at how unsurprised she was, and surprised too at how warm she felt when heart beats ago she'd been freezing in the coldest night she'd ever known.

"I hope you choke on me," she told it as calm as she could manage, feeling only a little bit foolish. She breathed deep and stared direct into the wolf's eyes at last; just as you were never supposed to do with a dog, unless you were sure it knew who was in charge. She might – no, she _was _going to die screaming, but she wasn't going to die looking away and pretending it wasn't happening.

Which was why, in what she thought would be her final breath, she noticed that the eyes, the eyes weren't-

It lunged and she did scream, screamed again as she clutched at the tears in her flesh, screaming until it felt like the bastard had ripped her throat open as well as her arm, screaming until she passed out from the sheer pain in a pool of melted snow and her own blood.

* * *

><p>She was sixteen and her cloak was white long turned grey with age, not red. Red still brought her out in goose flesh and nausea, though four years had passed since the night had ended. She rarely put it aside even in summer, and wore long sleeves even on the hottest of the dog days.<p>

People learned very early on not to grip her scarred arm.

She slept in the same loft as the girls of a neighbour who'd been kind enough to take her in – though not kind enough, she'd sometimes uncharitably think, to come out and help when they could have (and probably die in vain, she'd always admit) or to let her die in the snow when they should have. But she bore them no ill will and behaved herself perfectly, even curled up with the other girls on winter nights for warmth when it was cold enough. She earned her keep, small as it was, by taking messages to the enclaves of wood cutters up in the mountains, and she'd walked once or twice all the way through the forest to the land on the other side.

It wasn't so special, she said when the other girls dared to ask her, they're no different from us. They're really not that far away. The woods weren't a barrier to another world, they were just a hidey hole to get through as quick as possible

She wasn't wholly without fear; she'd keep well away from the hunters and their slaughtering, although that was more because the smell that clung to them would make her sick almost at once. The only time she'd approach them was when they'd caught a wolf, and even then she'd only watch from a distance. Red, as said, she could not abide. She wouldn't go out during full moons, not for any reason or any fee. On nights when the wolves howled and she was in bed she'd always jerk awake if she was asleep and stiffen if she was awake, and her night would be sleepless and a trial for her bedfellows; if she was on the road at the time, as she sometimes was, she would run for the tree nearest to the path and shin up it and sit shivering until dawn, rubbing her arm.

That was when she was younger. This night when the wolves began their song she just pulled her cloak tighter, ignored the tingle in her arm – it meant nothing, had meant nothing for years - and kept walking. It was high summer, it wouldn't get truly dark until midnight and there'd been plenty for the beasts to eat in the days gone by.

_(She should have been afraid as of old, she knows now. She should have shinned up a tree as she used to, dozed in its branches until the sun came back in full, and even then it might not have done her any good. She'd grown complacent and slow in the time she'd been left alone, dangerously complacent and fatally slow. But if she had kept fully alert, if she'd done all that she should…well, there would be no more story._

_Maybe.)_

She felt the eyes on her just before she saw the one they belonged to, which was fairly impressive, and she slipped a hand into her basket and grabbed the knife as she watched the man shape come closer to her and her skin began to prickle. That it was clearly a man instead of a wolf didn't make it any better. Sometimes it made it worse. She'd seen and heard the trouble the other girls could get themselves into, far more often than people would give her credit for. At least no one within fifty miles expected the same behaviour from her, women and men of all ages alike, or at least all the fairly civilized ones did.

She was at the very edge of the wood cutters' clearing, and the sweat pooling at the base of her back was beginning to cool and she was breathing easier again – and already beginning to dread when she'd have to come back the same way tomorrow – when he stepped out of the shadows, onto the path and blocked her way.

He wasn't naked, he didn't have leaves and twigs in his hair and dark wires all over his body, his ears weren't pointed and his eyebrows didn't meet and she couldn't see how sharp his teeth were. Nor did he look like a woodsman, or a jolly forester all in green or a huntsman. He wasn't young: he looked to be at least twice her age, maybe older. His face was more tanned than any other man she'd seen, there was silver in his beard even if the hair on his head – shoulder length and waving - was still dark. He wore skins, and where he wasn't wearing skins he wore things, things too expensive for anyone from around here to own even in the years since the war, boots that looked to be made of finest leather, a tunic of deep red, _red_, with shining embroidery, a splendid bow and quiver.

She wondered how she could see all this when the light was not so good. Then she felt the pain in her arm, weach tear throbbing so bad she nearly dropped the blade. She looked direct into his eyes and swore so loud and strong it made him laugh and it hurt her ears to hear it, it hurt her nose to smell his scent, it hurt her eyes to see him smile as he looked at her with those eyes, those eyes.

"Get out of my way," she said as she felt the red and his eyes and his laugh drain her and the black begin to creep in at the corners of her vision. "They're waiting for me. They could probably hear me just now; they're coming to see what's wrong."

He said nothing. He just walked closer, standing so close she could have sunk her knife into his throat or his guts. _That's for my poor brothers, _she could have said, _that's for my Pa! _In fact she did press the very point of the blade to his red _red _chest. One thrust and she might have killed him. Might have.

_(Didn't.)_

She thought, looking into his eyes, that if she killed him now (if she even could) she'd have to explain to the woodcutters, one of whom she could see even now coming across the clearing towards them, that _Oh, I killed him because I'm fairly sure he's also the wolf who killed my family._ She lowered the knife and stepped around him - and though her sleeves were as long as ever, she could somehow feel every second of his skin against hers when his fingers brushed her arm.

She thought he might catch and hold her but he did no more, and she ran into the clearing and met the woodcutter, who asked her how the journey was and then, rather puzzled, "Was there anything wrong? When you were paused just on the edge, and swearing. I thought I saw something, but's it's gone now."

"No," she said. "Only me. I barked my shin, but it's fine now." Then at last she was sick.

* * *

><p><strong>I worked in a tiny and rather cleaned up reference to the film Dog Soldiers in here. Can you find it?<strong>

**I imagine the wolf's human form to look like a slightly younger version of Ciarin Hinds in Ivanhoe (1997). Look it up, it's a good tv series.**


	2. Chapter 2

She had passed seventeen and was on her way to eighteen, and her cloak was blue velvet and only slightly moth eaten, bought from a gypsy woman passing through in the spring. It had probably been snatched decades before from the shoulders of a rich lady, rich enough to wear the perfume that still lingered in the folds and was impossible to name but comforting to smell.

She still carried messages, and now she would sometimes go all the way to the dwarves in their mines to bring orders for metal ores and crystals, and make a few small purchases of her own. They were really a relief after the company of her neighbours. They didn't know about that winter night (nor the summer night neither) or why she hated the colour red; dwarves are a blessedly incurious race. They live to work, and since they're born from eggs she wasn't even certain they had anything between their legs to think with. Unlike some.

She still slept in her neighbour's loft, but now only had the one bed mate; the other two girls were safely married and the one left was betrothed and due to wed when summer came. Her arm pained her so at nights that she would moan, and Ellie would misunderstand entirely and whisper, not altogether kindly, that she needed a man.

The few young men left who didn't have sweet hearts or new brides were constantly trying to talk to her – and, she had to give them this, they didn't seem to be at all sorry to do it, heaven knew why. They would accompany her on the trips she made and try to keep up as best they could, and she was mostly glad for the company. When she was alone in the woods, more often than not she knew there was a shadow that followed her always at the corner of her eye in the trees, gone if she turned the slightest bit towards it.

The chatter of the boys helped to drive the shadow away even if the pain in her arm remained - and yes, all right, it _was_ fun to see each of their faces when she pulled the crossbow out from the basket lightening quick.

Still, they all talked sooner or later when they returned to the village, and one evening Simon called her down from the loft and said that perhaps she should stop carrying messages and going into the forest so much.

"And do what?" she asked, honestly curious as to what he thought she was otherwise good for.

"Well," he said, surprised, "perhaps settling down?" She gaped at him. "With, with one of-"

"_Gods,_ no," she said as soon as she could speak again, thinking of the man in red in _red _and the eyes, and what would happen if he decided to come for her and a husband tried to stand in the way.

Besides. _Her? _Married? Who honestly thought _that _a good idea?

Simon seemed to be one who did; he got angry very quick, though there was concern as well underneath. "You're nearly eighteen, you know there's plenty of young men who'd be glad to have you."

_They were?_ she wondered. As a matter of fact, no, she hadn't known. Everyone and not just Ellie seemed to assume she needed a man, without even asking her. "They don't even know me."

"They would if you would only give them a chance and let them in!" He sighed and rubbed his eyes, reached for the spectacles she'd had the dwarves make for him. "You spend far too much time in that forest, you almost seem to live in there now. Really, what do you love about it so much that makes you turn your back on a normal life, especially after-" He caught himself before he spoke of the winter night that no one ever mentioned now. As if just hearing about it would cause her to scream and start attacking everything in sight; and he said the boys actually wanted to _marry_ her? And he actually thought-

"I don't love the forest," she told him. "I hate, I hate going in there, I'm so afraid," and to her horror and his as well she started to cry and that brought Anne in from the bedroom to see what Simon had done wrong this time.

And, what with the sobs and the back rubs and the wiping away of tears it all came out, the eyes and the ever lasting pain in her arm and the man in red.

"Heavens above," Anne said at last, wiping her tears away yet again and hugging her shoulders. "Heavens above, girl, why didn't you _tell _anyone?"

"What should I have said?" And there didn't seem to be any reply to that, at least not from Anne.

"A werewolf," Simon said, putting a name to whatever hunted her at last. "Save us all, a damn _werewolf_, and you've been going out into that forest what seems like every day for _years_. Did you _want _to die?"

"I - I didn't know he'd come back, until last year, like I told you, I didn't even know he _was _one."

"And you've _still_ been carrying the messages anyway since then?"

"I had the crossbow the dwarves made me. And-" She took Anne's hand and moved it away from her face. "He hasn't done anything like last time, or we would have heard of it. I thought he might have gone away again."

"But if you think he's still about, then what _does _he want?" Simon demanded, and then he looked at her again, particularly at the sleeve that had pulled up when she'd wiped away her tears and the scarred flesh beneath. His eyes widened that little bit, and her stomach felt like it had dropped down her legs, through the soles of her feet and into the earth below, and dragged her heart along behind it for the ride.

_(She knew, of course. She'd known ever since the man in red, the werewolf, had looked at her. Looked with the same eyes he'd worn in a different face and her family's blood splattered all over him, and had bitten her. And not just bitten her, he'd marked her, like a brand on a cow or a blob of dye on a sheep's fleece, to be sure of finding his property again. She'd known it in winter, forgotten it and remembered again in high summer, and for all the things he's ever done for her she will never, _ever_ forgive him for that.) _

"Please don't tell," she said, tears starting up again. "I'll leave, I'll leave right away, I _promise_, I'll go away and never come back, just, _please _don't tell anyone, they'll hunt me down, they'll blame me."

Her eyes were so full that she could hardly see the blur of Simon coming forward. But he did come forward, and he hugged her, if somewhat nervously, and Anne hugged her too. "You _silly_ girl," he said, sounding a bit teary himself. "We'll have to tell them, of course we have to, but you're not going to leave. We're going to _protect _you."

* * *

><p>She was nearly eighteen and her cloak was black, flapping in the wind and the torch light as she called to the beast, "I'm over here, you big bastard!" And it looked up from where it stood over Stephen's prone body – <em>It just scratched him, <em>she had time to think in a fever, _it didn't bite him, it hasn't bitten anyone _– and stared straight at her, its breath steaming even on this mild night. She felt twelve again, faced with the monster who wanted to gobble her up, every last morsel.

She threw down the torch, grabbed the trigger of the crossbow, pulled and fired-

-and the monster dodged and the bolt missed it _missed_, she didn't even have time to swear before the beast smashed forward and knocked her off her feet and the bow from her hands; she gasped as she fell to the earth, tried to get up quick, screamed as something sharp clamped down on her middle and what felt like the points of a thousand tiny knives pierced through her clothes and stopped just at the very surface of her skin, wailed _"Nooooooo,", _tried to kick and flail and made the pain worse as the monster closed its jaws further; _"Shoot it shoot it now SHOOT IT" _she yelled before the monster leapt forward and all her howls of pain and fury were lost in endless jolting up and down, wind whistling past and making her eyes water, things hitting and tearing her trailing hands and feet, what little she had been able to eat coming right back up, the jaws around her waist feeling like they were going to bite or break her in two, whichever came first-

_(She'd been foolish from the start and foolish throughout despite all she'd learned, thinking she could be both the perfect bait and fast enough to kill him and free herself. At least no one else paid for her stupidity. And perhaps in the end, this was the best and only way._

_Perhaps.)_

-and it all stopped as she dropped to the ground, hit her nose hard and felt the warm gush of blood start, tried to pull herself up and scramble forward but an iron weight landed on the trailing cloak and nearly choked her. As she gasped and hacked on her own blood a great cold nose pushed at her bleeding side, rolled her over and paws pressed down on her shoulders and she was, once again, nose to nose with him, standing over her, blocking out the moonlight and his eyes glinting in that dark mass of him.

She blew bloody bubbles and said, "I hate you. You hear me in there? I hate you and if you turn me I'll kill you, I will, I swear I will."

She'd seen dogs that were able to smile, in a strange manner, curling their mouths up at the corners. The wolf seemed to do the same now, so many teeth showing, and then they came down, closer but so slowly to her throat.

She wasn't going to wait for _that. _She reached up swift and unpinned the cloak and let him see the necklace she'd bought off the dwarves so recent; silver, as much of it as she'd been able to afford made into a necklace, and bracelets as well so she could press her wrists to the paws on her shoulders. It made her grin to see the bugger recoil with a yelp, and she laughed as she pushed herself up and tried to get to her feet– but the laugh was knocked out of her as something rammed hard into her back and she was down again. She tried to fight against the ocean of pain but had to give up, knew she'd never get to her feet again and sobbed aloud as the wolf's shadow fell over her. But she only sobbed once, and tried to blink back the tears as she looked up once more into his eyes.

She tried to speak, but fast the teeth came down and she thought it had come at last and there was pain – but it was only the chain being pulled and broken from her neck and tossed away, and now her throat was utterly bare and he'd started to drool, he had, there was slobber dripping to the ground.

"I swear," she whispered to him. "I swear."

Then he bit down once more and this time, _this time_, she thought she'd known pain when she was marked but this there was no pain in the world that could prepare her, and she didn't scream, though it wasn't for lack of trying.

* * *

><p><strong>I'm not sure how lycanthropy works in Once Upon a Time, since Granny was bitten as a child but didn't become a werewolf until her 'husband' turned her, whatever that entails; so here I've left it vague as to what constitutes the process.<strong>

**What did everyone think of Red's grandfather? Is he a dirty rapist in more ways than one, stealing away Granny's freedom and forcing her to bear his child? Or is he more something to be pitied despite what he did? Please comment; I really want to portray the relationship without resorting to Stockholm Syndrome. Skin Deep already did that for me.**

**(Joking, joking, I love that episode.)**


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